Mirza Yawar Baig – Attitude of gratitude
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The speakers discuss the negative impact of smallpox on people, including lack of knowledge and fear of the virus. They encourage people to count on Allah's platform for happiness and express gratitude towards him. The speakers also emphasize the importance of grannyialism and learning to apply lessons from the previous day to the current day.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds.
My dear respected brothers and sisters, elders.
I thought today it's a good idea to
look at the, what I like to call
the other side of the picture.
We live in a world today where thanks
to what news is presented and how it
is presented, we have a very dark and
dismal and depressing picture of our life and
times.
And that is because only bad news sells.
And in a profit-driven world, ruled by
predatory capitalist barons, nothing which doesn't make money
can survive.
For example, the root cause of our environmental
crisis is that when net worth is measured
only in dollars, then wood has value, not
a standing forest.
So, felling a forest makes profit, but left
untouched, it represents what we call unexploited opportunity.
Having said that, let us see what the
reality of our world is really, by comparing
it with what it was 50 years ago,
that is within my lifetime.
I'm not talking about ancient history.
Take infant mortality, malnutrition, treatment for heart disease,
running hot and cold water in the bathrooms
when you turn on your shower, elevators, refrigerators,
televisions, is that a blessing or not?
Telephones and a thousand other conveniences that we
take for granted were either not there or
were in a very nascent stage, which you
can only see in a museum today.
My father, Rahmatullah Ali, before the age of
40, had three heart attacks.
And the only treatment was to take rest,
and not eat oily foods and not eat
too much of meat and so on, that's
it.
Because angioplasty and bypass surgery had not been
invented until then.
Neither had cataract surgery.
In my city, in Hyderabad, one of our
nobles, Fakhr-ul-Mulk Bahadur, built a palace
in 1870, and it stands today, which has
600 rooms.
150 of them were furnished with Louis XVI
furniture from France.
Today, the cost of Louis XVI chairs ranges
from $2,400 to $24,000 per chair.
Now, I'm not saying that Fakhr-ul-Mulk
paid that price, but obviously he still paid
a fortune.
But that's not the point of my story.
My point of my story is to ask
you to think about this.
When you are standing in your shower with
hot water raining down on your head, adjusted
to just the right temperature, and reflect on
the fact that this wonderful palace didn't have
a shower with running hot and cold water.
It also didn't have flush toilets.
It also doesn't have air conditioning, which, in
the summer in Hyderabad, where the temperature goes
to 120 degrees, is useful.
Remember that money was not the issue.
The technology didn't exist.
Now, go further back in history and look
at all the great monarchs and their palaces
and the luxury they lived in and so
on, and you will realize that some of
the most common, essential conveniences that we are
used to and we believe we can't do
without them, were not available to people who
ruled entire nations.
My question is, are we conscious of this
and do we thank Allah for it?
Gratitude is the platform on which happiness runs.
We all want to be happy, but how
many of us are consciously grateful?
Allah began His book with reminding us to
be grateful.
Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen.
All praise and all thanks is to Allah,
the Creator, Protectors, Sustainer of the Universe, Rabbil
Alameen.
We read this ayah in every rakat or
every salah, but do we contemplate on it?
Do we reflect on it?
And do we count the number of things
that we need to thank Allah for?
So, let's start doing that right now.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, وَآتَاكُمْ مِنْ
كُلِّ مَا سَآلْتُمُوهُ وَإِنْ تَعُدُّوا نِعْمَةَ اللَّهِ لَا
تُحْسُوهَا إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَظَلُومٌ كَفَّارٌ Allah said, which
means, and He, Jalla Jalaluhu, has granted you
all that you asked Him for.
If you try to count, just count, we're
not talking about being grateful and expressing, just
count.
If you try to count Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala's blessings, you will never be able
to number them.
Indeed, humankind is truly ظَلُومٌ كَفَّارٌ truly unfair
and truly ungrateful.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
save us from being in that list.
And then Allah said, in the same surah,
surah Ibrahim, وَإِذْ تَعَذَّنَ رَبُّكُمْ لَئِنْ شَكَرْتُمْ لَزِيدَنَّكُمْ
وَلَئِنْ كَفَرْتُمْ مِنْ عَذَابِ لَشَدِيدٍ Allah said, which
means, and when your Rabb proclaimed, if you
are grateful, I will certainly give you more,
I will increase my blessing.
But if you are ungrateful, surely my punishment
is severe.
I invite myself when you, to make a
list of the top ten things that we
should thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for
and do that in tahajjud, in sujood.
And do this every day and see how
your life gets transformed.
See how your heart will be full of
happiness.
Expressing gratitude to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is also to express it to those people
in our life who Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala sent His blessings through.
Parents and siblings and children and spouses and
teachers and friends and grandchildren and many more.
Do we thank them?
Specifically thank them?
Do we express our gratitude for what they
do for us and how that impacts us?
Just think of one of them and imagine
that you are attending the janazah of that
person.
See how you would feel.
Imagine life without them.
For many of us, we can't even imagine
that.
Yet, when they are with us, we take
them for granted.
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said about people
who are ungrateful.
In the hadith of Abu Huraira r.a
and Abu Huraira r.a and the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he said, Abu Huraira
r.a said and reported that Rasulullah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam said, whoever does not thank
people has not thanked Allah.
Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam didn't tell us
to wait until they are dead to thank
them or say something good about them, you
know, eulogies and writing letters of remembrance.
Say it right away.
If you haven't done it, go do it
now after Jummah.
First thing you do, pick up your phone,
call them, go meet them, even better.
After all, think about this.
If they had done something wrong or if
they had done something which you didn't like,
believe me, there's not one of us who
wouldn't go and search for that person and
tell them right there.
Even if it is something which didn't directly
harm you or affect you, make one mistake
and you will have ten people standing in
line to say you made that mistake.
So why wait to thank and praise when
you don't wait to criticise?
You don't wait to express your anger?
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam used to say good
things about his Sahaba all the time and
he said that in their presence or in
the presence of their closest friends in the
full knowledge that this would be conveyed to
them.
Imagine how happy, for example, I'll give you
some examples from the Seerah.
Imagine how happy Abu Musa al-Ashari would
have been, how happy he must have felt
when he was standing in Salah in the
Masjid and he was reciting the Quran aloud
and he felt the presence of someone behind
him.
When he finished his Salah, he made Salaam,
he turned around, it was Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam himself.
And Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told him how
much he loved hearing his recitation.
Abu Musa al-Adela said, Ya Rasulullah, if
I knew you were listening, I would have
recited longer.
How he must have felt, think about that.
Why did Nabi Ali Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam need
to stand there and tell him this?
You could have gone, you could have appreciated
and gone away, he didn't do that, he
stayed there.
Imagine how Omar ibn Khattab Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam must have felt when somebody told him
that Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that when
Shaitan sees Omar coming down a street, he
changes his direction and goes down a different
street.
How Sayyidina Omar must have felt when he
heard this?
Imagine Uthman ibn Affan Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's
pleasure when he was told that Rasulullah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam took the Bayah on his behalf,
under the tree of Hudaybiyyah.
And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said, Arabic
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala declared that he
was pleased with those people.
He said, indeed Allah was pleased with the
believers when they pledged allegiance to you, O
Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, under the tree.
He knew what was in their hearts, so
he sent down serenity and tranquillity upon them
and rewarded them with a victory at hand
and many spoils of war they will gain
for Allah Almighty always.
And that is one, on a side note,
that is the reason why we Muslims do
not criticise the Sahaba for anything they did,
because who are we to judge those who
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said that he
was pleased with?
Finally, imagine how Abu Bakr radiyallahu anhu must
have felt when he heard Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam himself, he heard this saying in Masjid
al-Nabawi al-Sharif packed with the Sahaba
on the Thursday before the Monday when he
passed away Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
He said, which means Allah is witness that
I have fulfilled everyone's right and returned everyone's
favour except that of Abu Bakr and Allah
will reward Abu Bakr on my behalf.
Imagine how Abu Bakr Siddiq would have felt
when he heard Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam saying
it in front of him right there.
There are many other stories about the way
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam appreciated and encouraged those
with him so that they loved him more
than anyone else.
The operative question is what are you and
I going to do differently starting now, starting
today?
Because the only worthwhile purpose of learning is
to apply it.
That is what transformed the life of the
Sahaba, what they did, not only what they
knew.
The Sahaba Ridwanullahi Alaihi Wajma'in obeyed the
commands of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala without
hesitation in the way that they learnt from
Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
They didn't question the commands of Allah or
the way Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam taught them
to obey the command.
They heard and they obeyed.
No arguments, no hesitation, no doubt.